Awesome Astronomy - NASA's Going Nuclear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCqg3NIwbHE

Hosted by Ralph Wilkins.

From Feb 3, 2023.

Nuclear powered rockets are about to become a reality opening up space travel for humanity. Ever since the dawn of nuclear weapons and reactors, advanced militaries and space agencies have dreamt of powering rockets with long lasting energy efficient nuclear fuel.

The Soviet Union and United States ran a number of programs to develop nuclear propulsive power for human spaceflight. Deep space robotic spacecraft, lunar and Mars rovers have all been powered by 'nuclear batteries' in the past - as have experiments that the Apollo astronauts took to the moon - but no nuclear rocket engines have been tested, let alone flown, in space. That is about to change with a NASA/DARPA collaboration to do just that in the hope of cutting the time to travel to Mars by more than half.

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